Fall 2018 lectures
Admission is free and open to the public
Jews, Muslims, and Music in the 20th Century Maghrib:
a History in Three Records
A lecture by Chris Silver
Segal Family Assistant Professor in Jewish History and Culture, Department of Jewish
Studies, McGill University
with an introduction by Murat Yildiz
Assistant Professor, Department of History, Skidmore College
Monday, October 22
7:30 PM, Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall
For much of the twentieth century, North African Jews played an outsized role as both music-makers and purveyors of music across the Maghrib. In Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, all under French rule until the middle of the last century, indigenous Jewish vocalists, instrumentalists, and sonic impresarios of all manner utilized the phonograph to record a disappearing classical tradition––described alternately as “Arab,” “Muslim,” and “Andalusian”— while simultaneously pioneering popular musical forms mixed in style and language. Those efforts engendered fervent responses from a range of Jewish and Muslim fans and critics, and so too, from French authorities apprehensive about the increasingly unfettered flow of recorded music that stirred passions so. Through a focus on three such phonograph records and their trajectories, this talk explores both Jewish history and Jewish-Muslim relations in the region anew.
Chris Silver serves as the Segal Family Assistant Professor in Jewish History and Culture in the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University. For Silver’s research, he has been awarded numerous prizes including from the Posen Foundation, the American Academy of Jewish Research, and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies. His articles have appeared in the Moroccan history journal Hespéris-Tamuda, online for History Today, as well as in other popular publications. He earned his Ph.D. in History from UCLA.
This presentation is part of the Jacob Perlow Event Series sponsored by the Office of Special Programs. Funding is provided by endowments established by Jacob Perlow and by Beatrice Troupin.
About the Jacob Perlow Series: A generous grant from the estate of Jacob Perlow - an immigrant to the United States in the 1920s, a successful business man deeply interested in religion and philosophy, and a man who was committed to furthering Jewish education - supports annual lectures and presentations to the College and Capital District community on issues broadly related to Jews and Judaism.